Okay from what Wihl said I think its definitely a good idea to do every key in black with white legends as the pictures are, I was thinking of doing a pink heart for the companion cube but it's clearly going to be the most popular one and we'd need that for the volume of the whole set. Ichitz since I'm in school its probably best if you run it, but I'll definitely help in any way possible to get this done. It sounds like if we do a 12 key set we'd be looking at 12 x 35 for the molds, which is quite a lot and why I think we should do a 12 design set. On the other hand... if they're all the same color, the per key cost is going to go down really fast, to the point of even if we only get say 20 orders, that's 240 keys and based on the volume discounts in the SC2 keycap thread, that's $2 a key at 100, and it'll probably be even less than that. Hopefully around $1.50.
Doing some simple conservative estimates of cost, based upon $2 a key, we're looking at:
20 Orders:
Setup cost: 12 x $35= $420
Variable cost: 20 x 12 x $2 = $480
Cost per customer before shipping = $900/20 = $45
30 Orders:
Setup cost: 12 x $35= $420
Variable cost: 30 x 12 x $2 = $720
Cost per customer before shipping = $1,140/30 = $38
50 Orders:
Setup Cost: 12 x $35= $420
Variable Cost: 50 x 12 x $2 = $1200
Cost per customer before shipping = $1,620/50 = $32.40
75 Orders:
Setup Cost: 12 x $35 = $420
Variable Cost: 75 x 12 x $2 = $1800
Cost per customer before shipping = $2,220 = $29.60
So at $2 a key you can see that the up front costs are pretty high on this order, and I don't have that much cash sitting in my bank account, well I do but I need it lol. Anyways we'd definitely need to require payment before the order gets sent in, but at the same time that puts us at risk of them rejecting it and us having to refund a lot of money.
If we were able to negotiate a bigger volume discount and get something like a dollar or $1.50, that decreases the costs tremendously, someone should get ahold of SP and see what they say about it. I'd just say we've come up with a 12 key function set we'd like to buy and at all white on black what would the quantity discounts be after 100 keys if there are any. I would imagine they would as I'm a business major and I got to learn all about why they offer those discounts lol. If we were to get them at $1.50 the costs are respectively $39, $32, $26.40, and $23.60 per person. Expect the standard $6 US shipping and a 3% paypal fee happening as usual.
I think it would be best to do it this way: minimum 50 orders, once we hit that we start asking for prepayment because by that time we will have much more accurate cost estimates and then we go up to as many orders as we can get paid for 2 weeks after that, and then send them in. That way the cost per person should stay below $40 no matter what. Or we could ask for payment immediately at $40 and if we don't get enough orders for that much to cover the costs we refund it, and then we refund the difference to each person after.
So, not cheap to do this by any means but its worth it imo, these sets would be highly desirable if one meant to sell them after too.